Jason Segel Had to Lose Weight for His New Movie

The actor stars alongside Emily Blunt in his latest film The Five-Year Engagement but was told by bosses he should shift at least 35lbs as they wanted the film to be as realistic as possible.

He told talk show host David Letterman: “I was forced to lose weight for this movie. It was by the studio president! I was told it had to be conceivable that Emily Blunt would ever choose me to be her husband, which I think is fair enough! I had to lose a good 35lbs. I didn’t enjoy it but they sent a trainer to set and I had to work out twice a day and he would also watch me eat all day.”

However, the How I Met Your Mother star – who is currently dating actress Michelle Williams – says he didn’t follow the strict rules he was put under and did his best to eat as much food as possible.

He said: “What they didn’t anticipate is that I’m very clever and I play a chef in the movie, so there were a lot of scenes in which I had to eat. So I paid my co-stars phenomenal amounts of money to mess up their lines during the scenes and I’d get to keep eating!”

Jason Segel is a lovely, talented, hilarious, extremely lovable man, with or without 35 extra pounds. And if the studio wanted him to lose weight for a role, that’s shitty, but it’s understandable. Sometimes that’s just part of the job. But the idea that it wouldn’t be “realistic” or “conceivable” for Emily Blunt to be in a relationship with Jason Segel without weight loss is just sad, not to mention untrue. How many times have you seen cute, thin girls with dudes with a little extra weight, or even pretty thick girls with super skinny guys, or any other combination you could think of? A lot, right? Because sometimes people are actually attracted to another person’s character as opposed to just their hot bods. I know, it’s a novel concept, but it happens more than you think.

But really, if a girl would pass up a guy like Jason Segel over 35 pounds, then obviously she never deserved him in the first place.

While it is not necessarily unrealistic to think Emily Blunt might go for a guy with a few extra pounds — what about the studios usual MO of putting the most luscious woman they can find, usually much younger, with the really big guys? Seriously. It is done so often it has become a painful cliche.

I find it refreshing. With comedies, the man is always fat and the woman is always skinny and attractive (The Simpsons, Family Guy, Queen of Queens, Rules of Engagement). The American sitcom industry has used the same setting for comedies for the past 50 years. The couples on-screen for that kind of films are always formed of a man (who can look skinny, or fat, or bald, or young, or old) and a skinny, gorgeous woman no beyond her mid-30s. Always. It makes a change, a realistic change at that and I can’t quite believe it.